Juicing and Juicers – For Glowing Skin

I usually drink between 1-2 litres of green juice daily for breakfast. Whenever I stop for a few months, I notice that the palms of my feet and hands get rough to the touch. My skin also starts to wrinkle…Looks like it’s back to the gym to tone up! Not every juicer is the same.

There are two main types – Centrifugal and Slow Masticating.

Personally, I went through

Centrifugal Juicer

4 juicers of the former type and settled for a slow masticating juicer that has been well worth the extra splurge of cash.

So what’s the difference?

Centrifugal juicers have a spinning basket in the centre of the juicer and also juice your vegetables and fruit very fast. Slow masticating juicers have a screw type grinding attachment that separates the pulp from the juicer at a slow speed.

Slow masticating juicers keep more nutrients in your juice as there is less heat due to the slow grinding action. They are also more expensive. We are talking £150-£1,500.

Centrifugal juicers can be bought in most general shops and are useful for the person who is just beginning to juice and who drinks just one to two glasses of juice daily. However, when I started to make 6 glasses of juice daily, the juicer would pack up on me and often certain pieces would break.

I finally bit the bullet and splurged on an Oscar 900 Juicer which is still serving me well 5 years later.

Slow Masticating Juicer – Oscar 900

Sometimes I have mistakenly broken the front end parts whilst in use but have replaced them. The motor has always worked fine. Just to let you know, the difference between a juicer and a blender is that the juicer separates the pulp from the fruit/vegetable whilst the blender makes a smoothie of the whole fruit/vegetable which is chopped up into small pieces, then blended smooth.

I use a Vitamix blender as it is great for blending even nuts and seeds. It is powerful enough to make nut butter and various spreads, dips as well as nutmilks. As it is a blender, you may need to add water or other liquids to enable the blender do its job efficiently.

Here’s a Typical Example of a Juice I make:

Carrot Apple Delight

You will need:

5 carrots

2 apples

1 cucumber

A handful of parsley including stalks

2 slices of lemon

1/4 inch of ginger root

Method:

1. Simply chop carrots and cucumber in half and then length ways. Put each piece in juicer.

2. Then chop the apple and juice.

3. Add ginger toot and lemon slices including the rind

4. Juice the ingredients, drink and enjoy

Note: It is standard practice to add the juice of one quarter of a lemon slice to any of your juices to keep the it looking fresh and help retain the colour.

A Typical Example of a Blend/Smoothie

Using the same ingredients as you did for the juicer, chop all the fruit and veg into smaller pieces and add to your blender 1/2 a cup of water.

Remember to remove the lemon rind when making this.

Blend on slow speed at first for 10 seconds, then gradually increase speed to high for 30 seconds. If the veg or fruit is hard like carrots or sweet potatoes, blend for up to a minute.

Job done! Drink and enjoy your smoothie!

You can also make soups, purees, pates and nut butters with a Vitamix blender.

Yes, it’s kind of easy to get away from juicing or blending. I will have to get back to it with my preference of the whole part or as you brought out, blending. I can taste this ingredient all together blended into one carrots and apples all together. Thanks for the bit of motivation

Thanks for this articles.
I use a centrifugal juicer and I love it, it allows me to make juices out of practically anything. However, since I usually make juice just for one (myself!), I find it annoying to clean such a piece of equipment every single day. Besides, I prefer my orange juice with pulp!
I am considering weather or not I should change my system. A blender does seem like the simpler way to go but I would have to add some water to some fruits, like apples…
I will definetely try your recipes, they sound amazing!

I have several family members who suffer from eczema. it seems like nothing works permanently. My daughter actually was born with it. So I’m guessing its something I fed her while I was pregnant? I don’t know but its super frustrating. I’ve tried to clean up her diet but she just doesn’t like it. can you recommend anything for kids with eczema who are super picky about their foods?

Green juices made with green apples and cucumber are tasty. Also, put evening primrose oil into her food and mix it in. 5-10 capsules a day should be enough to work in her system You can also cut down on sugary drinks as this is the main culprit that causes inflammation and itchy skin.

Let me know how you get on Staci…it would be good to hear your family is healing…

Small in size and high quality is hard to come by. However, slow masticating juicers are smaller than centrifugal ones. As I do not know how much counter space you have, it would be difficult to recommend a brand to you.

My Omega is definitely smaller than my Mum’s Phillips though. You might have to search for a personal juicer.

I am sorry I couldn’t be more helpful to you at the moment, but I will do some research into this!

You just motivate me to use my blender and juicer again. I have both kind but I haven’t even open my juicer to try it out yet. This article gives me a push to start doing more juicing and blending. With juicing, I’m lazy to cleanup the mess but for blending sometime I don’t like the texture of it. Do you have any tip on overcoming any of these issues? Greatly appreciated!

I have mentioned that a slow juicer is better and easier to clean than one with a spinning basket. As for blending, I use a Vitamix blender which blends everything smooth including nuts and small seeds. Any other type of blender will not really do a good job unless it is on the same level as a Vitamix or higher.

A Vitamix is expensive but will last you and takes less than 5 minutes to wash up.

I have tried your recipe and grind it with my grinder but it is very coarse. I guess it doesn’t work well with my juicer. I have decided to order the same juicer that you have used. Can’t get to try it now as I am waiting for the shipping. it will be coming soon in 2 weeks. I will let you know more about it.

This was a very thorough and well-detailed way on how to make a Juice. I am amazed at how easy it is and how cheap it is with those machines. though I’ve tried getting juicer before, but then i will use my hand to downpress those fruit and it waste lots of time.
please can you help with how to get Slow masticating juicers?, though it’s costly, but i love the features..

You can find slow-masticating juicers online. Depending on where in the world you are, the price can vary from £250-£400. I recommended my Omega juicer to a lady whose daughter has eczema and noticed the price has gone up by £50!

It is now very fashionable for people to own a juicer. The good thing is an Omega is very durable and will last you years and years. Mine has and I use it almost every day. You can find online shops dedicated only for selling juicers. You will get a better service from them.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of green juice and a short period of time!

Do you find it filling?

I have a centrifugal juicer, and I must admit I went through my first one in about 6 months. I replaced it with the same model and luckily that has lasted longer. However, it might also be true that I haven’t had as many juices as I did the first six months. This is a reminder for me that I must juice more. I will try that apple and carrot idea. I was surprised you only recommended a couple of slices of lemon as quite often people seem to suggest half a lemon which I find a bit much.

I haven’t heard of a slow masticating juicer so when the time is right I will explore that option as well.

Hi Julia, my juices can be very filling if I include things like carrot, parsley, cucumber and even sometimes flaxseeds. These days I make smoothies which could be vegetable based or fruit. I could put 5 different things and spice it up with lemon to bring out the flavour.

You may have seen slow juicers online, but then again, you only get this type from dedicated online juicer suppliers most of the time. The price range starts at £200 or approximately $250.

Thanks a lot for this very interesting post, Stella! I completely agree with you… I can feel a difference in my skin too when I don’t drink a green juice, or even a carrot juice, although I drink much smaller amounts than you. I went through a time when I was drinking a litre or more per day, and now I only have one or two glasses per day, and I feel that’s more than enough. Maybe my mineral reserves have been replenished? I also prefer to have more smoothies now that my guts seem to be healed. You’re so lucky to have a Vitamix blender. They are so powerful! I would LOVE one now. I really like your blog. I shall bookmark it to have a look at your other posts later. Thanks for putting all of this together for us! 🙂 Nathalie

Hi Stella – thanks for sharing this interesting article. I have to confess that my juicer sees very little action as my partner doesn’t particularly enjoy fruit, and it doesn’t seem worth it, just juicing for myself. However, your recipe looks lovely, and perhaps wouldn’t be too sweet for his tastes? I will give it a try and hopefully convert him! All the best, Diane

The less fruit the better or your teeth will suffer as time passes. Green apples are brilliant for juicing and mixing with green leafy vegetables. Some lemon juice added will bring out the flavour more.

I’ve had a centrifugal juicer for several years now but my partner is pushing for an upgrade to the slower juicers – she agrees that there are better health benefits linked to these more expensive juicers due to the nutrient content.

You mention that these sort of juicers can reach prices like £1500 – I’m wondering where I could find a model at a more bargain entry price? Amazon are usually quite expensive with these sorts of things.

Thank you for this article explaining masticating juicers. In fact I’ve bought some centrifugal juicers in the past and was never really satisfied with the results. They were also hard to clean.

So my question is, are these masticating juicers any easier to clean? Obviously they seem to be worth it for durability and for they quality of the juice…I guess the main thing, if I get back into juicing, will I love it enough to be cleaning the juicer everyday? Shorter an easier cleaning time would help with that.

Thanks for this review on Juicer Machines. I use to do juicing but left it for a while as the juices sometimes bloated me.

I have read so much on the benefits of juicing and the importance of having a good machine is very important. i agree the Vitamix Blender is a good buy and really recommended by other health experts. What book do you recommend on Juicing ?. I would just like to add that when you add apples be very careful to remove the apple seeds. The seeds as a whole has no problems when then they cut and grated it can be harmful for the body. I have read several articles online about this. So clean out the seeds before juicing the apple. Cheers Jake

Wow Stella, you really are into juicing! I must consider you an expert on the various juicers that can be purchased, as you say if somebody wants to juice up to 5 times a day it looks like the slow masticating juicer is the way to go. I love some of your recipes, I like fruit and nuts myself and mixing them together in a juicer makes them sound Yummy!

I think you need a lot of patience to juice that many times in one day but the benefits far outweigh the task of getting all the fruit veg and nuts together, which is your favourite recipe?